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Spiced Veal

A baked veal meatloaf made with oyster crackers, eggs, butter, salt, and sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Spiced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the meatloaf

  1. In a bowl, combine the veal, crushed oyster crackers, beaten eggs, salt, butter, and sage. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake for 2 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + sagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the loaf.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it bakes.
Oyster crackers
Absorb moisture and help hold the loaf together while it cooks.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly until well combined. Thorough mixing spreads the eggs, crackers and seasoning evenly through the meat so the loaf binds and bakes uniformly. Overworking finely chopped meat can make it dense, so mix only until the ingredients are evenly combined.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, oyster, egg, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, oyster, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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